March 10, 2006

Spring break!

It's almost. One more class. Just a little standing, mootness, and ripeness -- with a dollop of Take Care Clause. It's a warm 39° here in Madison, Wisconsin, not counting the sun warmth factor. What? You don't count the sun warmth factor? You count the wind chill factor though, don't you, you pessimist? Me? I'm in a good mood. I love teaching standing, mootness, a ripeness, and I love Spring Break, and I love having such a cool group of students that for the first time in 20 years not one member of the class requested that I cancel the last class before Spring Break. Dedication!

IN THE COMMENTS: This post is recognized as a variation on the blog tradition of the "open thread," mondegreens break out, and I link to the Laughing Elvis.

33 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let us hope your students are as diligent in their law career as this man was (and is).

Unknown said...

I have to comment on your new picture: very nice!

Goatwhacker said...

Geez, is this the official hijacked thread of the day? Well OK, I'll get in on it too, I like Irish music so let's all talk about Irish music on this thread.

But seriously it's about 40 degrees and sunny here, and it feels great. Spring is near.

Ann Althouse said...

Maybe I should declare an open thread now and then....

They're playing Jimi Hendrix in the café right now. "All Along the Watchtower." "None were ever on the mine. Know any other is worth."

Anonymous said...

Open threads are nice, but I would prefer to see bloggers have "seque" threads. Where comments are considered "not off topic" as long as there is a reasonable segue from post to comment.

For added Project Idle Runway fun, you can enable voting for best use of original post to segue.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps that would not be a segue thread but an "improv" thread.

Ann Althouse said...

I think people can tell when we've got a playful, free-associative thread going and when there's a topic to be stuck to. Only the second is hijackable. It's still possible to post a bad comment on the first type, by posting something that's not conversational or is too much about belaboring some serious topic of yours. This post (and the one yesterday about the cathedral) is intended to get people talking freely, and I appreciate it when the commenters get it.

SippicanCottage said...
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SippicanCottage said...
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Anonymous said...

it's hard to improvise on a one-note piano

You're the furniture expert Slippery, but I will take your word for it.

Beth said...

Sunny and 80 here; garbage pickup behind by a week, so a quick dip back in the 50s would be welcome, but alas, not in the forecast.

82 days until hurricane season.

Ann Althouse said...

Hey, it's 52° here now and Spring Break has broken out in all its beauty. The For Sale sign is in the front yard now, and the last of the snow is melting, revealing some debris that I put out for trash day that got covered in snow and ignored. That doesn't make a good impression on prospective buyers, so I'm afraid I'll have to begin the break by putting on work gloves and picking up miscellaneous junk.

Palladian said...

I remember thinking that the Billy Ocean song "Caribbean Queen" was actually "Caribou Freeze".

The Beatles are a treasure trove of misheard lyrics for young American listeners. When I was getting into the Beatles in about 8th grade, I was sure that "Across the Universe" contained the line "Kangaroo Dave Uh..Oh"

Don't get me started on "I am the Walrus"...

Icepick said...

Aw, jeez, Elizabeth, did you have to remind me about hurricane season already? It'll get here just the same if we ignore it for a while, and we'll feel better in the meantime.

...

Or maybe not, given your trash situation.

...

Incidentally, I was driving along the 417 last weekend and realized all the blue tarps from 2004 were finally gone from the south stretch of the Greeneway. Progress!

MadisonMan said...

I thought The Boss' Point Blank was Born Blind for the longest time.

There really is nothing better than the first warm Spring Day. Aaaah. Time to start looking for crocuses!

Kyle said...

75 degrees here. I see some Pakistani grad students getting ready to fly kites next to the ultimate frisbee game on the mall. I hope nobody has to call campus police. ;)

SippicanCottage said...
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Beth said...

Icepick,

You're right, it comes when it comes. But when it does, we're going to have a huge flying debris problem.

Our skyline is a patchwork of blue tarps and Mexican roofing crews. Blue tarp was the Mardi Gras costume of choice this season. I wish I had stock in that, and white biohazard suits. One grocery I went in recently has a little sign on the door asking people to remove their hazard suits before entering. Doh!

Anonymous said...

Here they ask you to check your weapons and they remind you that you need to show identification in order to buy sudafed.

Stupid red state.

tiggeril said...

Anyone have a good recipe for Thai-style ginger chicken?

Ann Althouse said...

Let's be clear about that Jimi Hendrix song. I wasn't mishearing the lyrics. He was missinging them! He's not even close to the actual lyrics at that point in the song, except for "worth."

And I'm making Bolognese sauce for pasta.

Palladian said...

That "blue state/red state" shit is about as fresh and appealing as a bowl of egg salad left in the trunk of the Buick for a week after the Lutheran picnic.

Back on topic!

"Just a little standing, mootness, and ripeness -- with a dollop of Take Care Clause."

Sounds like a good description of my last blind date!

Anonymous said...

Okay, stupid state where it's representatives insist on making it legal to carry loaded weapons into bars, and make sure that law enforcement creates database of people that buy over the counter cold remedies.

And stupid country that insists that The growing availability of methamphetamine is a form of terrorism unto itself." Many of Dent's colleagues apparently agree, so they've attached surveillance, "smuggling", and "money laundering" provisions to the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act.

These vast new police powers, contained in a new "Combat Methamphetamine Act" (CMA) and other provisions, serve no purpose in the ongoing and serious struggle against terrorism. One proposal could place millions of Americans who purchase cold medicine on a huge government watch list; another could broaden powers that have been used to prosecute people for catching lobsters whose tails are too short. What could possibly be Congress' motivation in adding stuff like this to a mammoth piece of counterterrorism legislation (ironically, as part of an agreement negotiated with wavering Senators to put more checks on the government's PATRIOT Act powers)? The answer is, to tweak the parlance of pundits, very September 10th. The CMA pushes Congress's favorite pre-9/11 bipartisan activity: escalating the never-ending War on Drugs.

SippicanCottage said...
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Simon Kenton said...

Misheard song lyrics, like

Jose, can you see?

are called mondegreens. The type location is the old ballad, heard as

"They took Sir Patrick Spens
And Lady Mondegreen,"

but actually written as

"They took Sir Patrick Spens
And laid him on the green."

I suppose "Louie Louie" my generation's most fertile source of mondegreens. You could argue it's the fractal of songs: within one finite song length, an infinity of lyrics, all of them Rorschachs of their 'transcribers.'

Ann Althouse said...

Sippican: On XM Satellite Radio yesterday they played a live version of Elvis singing "Are You Lonesome Tonight" where he responded to someone removing a toupee with the lines "Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare/Do you gaze at your bald head and wish you had hair?" Then he pretty much laughs the rest of the (supposed to be) sad song. Ah, here, you can listen to the whole thing on line.

amba said...

You folks have spring fever.

SippicanCottage said...
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chuck b. said...
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SippicanCottage said...
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XWL said...

I'll add to the Misheard Lyrics thread within a thread by linking to the Archive

It's named 'kissthisguy' in honor of Purple Haze.

Also, unsurprisingly there are 11 Dylan songs in their database.

Here's one, guess the song, and correct lyrics (or come up with even wronger lyrics of your own)

"The arts, my friend, are in a bowling pin,
They're in a bowling pin."

Kev said...

I'm late to the party here, so nobody may ever read this (except Ann in the comments email), but since we're on the subject of mondegreens, snopes.com has a great roundup of misheard lyrics to Christmas songs. (My favorite one, which isn't listed in the current update, is the part of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" where "so bring us some figgy pudding" is misheard as "so bring us some friggin' pudding." Priceless!)

Also, doesn't the word "Mondegreens" conjure up the image of a fancy upscale drugstore?

Kev said...
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